Though Pyle's students are performing a classical dance move, Ballez, a weekly 90-minute class held in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, hardly feels traditional. At the beginning of every class, dancers sit in a circle on the floor, introducing themselves with their preferred gender pronouns along with thoughts on the topic of the week, which may be adagio extensions or the philosophy of belonging. The ritual feels more like a supportive, hyped-up huddle than the intro to a classical ballet class.

“I was, frankly, triggered by traditional ballet classes — the music, the mirrors, and all the expectations would make me feel real freaked out in my body, [so much so] that I couldn’t do the movements,” Pyle says, reflecting on their earlier years as a dancer. “I thought, OK, for myself, I need to redefine what ballet is.”

Pyle founded Ballez in 2011 during an artist’s residency at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange in order to offer dancers (with a wide range of experience and proficiency) a radically inclusive queer space. And while the classes have developed in their structure, and size, over the past seven years, the goal remains the same — to offer the same exercises as a regular ballet class but with more friendliness, inclusiveness, space, and humor.

“Ballez arose out of a submerged desire inside of myself to return to ballet,” Pyle explains. Pyle had previously quit the dance discipline at age 17, while studying at an "intensive" fine arts boarding school. Struggling with an eating disorder and the rigid gender limitations of classical ballet — as a female-assigned dancer, Pyle “felt trapped,” unable to do the movements they wanted to do, like pick up other dancers for lifts — they switched to contemporary dance, which has more often played with traditional gender norms in performance. But even then, Pyle had to “fight to lift,” and to assert themself in order to be given parts that felt good.

"Did I want to stop doing ballet or did I get forced out of it?"

“I thought I had quit ballet because I wanted to, but in my late twenties, I thought, Did I want to stop doing ballet or did I get forced out of it? Did the limitations just kind of foreclose upon me until I had to leave?” Pyle says. So then, what if ballet pirouetted its way into the 21st century? “I think the ballet world is very, very slowly waking up to the fact that a lot of these old ideas about how partnering works don’t make sense,” Pyle says. “I don’t think that it’s fast enough.”

Pyle envisions Ballez as ballet performed on a dancer's own terms. After introductions, students practice the typical exercises, but without mirrors—plies (knee bends), tendus (leg stretches), frappes (quick foot movements), dégagés (tiny kicks), and grande battements (big kicks). During this, though, Pyle encourages them to wink or regally wave at each other across the barre, and they exchange the occasional "butch nod" (a discreet ritual of recognition among the queer community). And during pas de deux (dance duets), pairs learn both the ballerina and danseur role, switching between the flowery hand motions of a waif-like swan to those of a steady, supporting prince.

Like most of Pyle's students, I learned of Ballez through word of mouth, and began attending weekly classes in September 2017. I’d grown up taking ballet and dance classes, often feeling like the only queer person on stage (which, especially as a teenager, is not the best feeling). Ballez was different —being in a dedicated queer space is always special, and being able to do something I love, and to not be the best at it, is freeing. I can flub the choreography or be the least flexible during stretching and still reclaim this hobby within my community.

"Being in a dedicated queer space is always special, and being able to do something I love, and to not be the best at it, is freeing."

Celeste Roberts, 29, who has taken dance classes their whole life (and at Ballez since 2014), says Ballez makes them feel less alone. “When I’m having a bad day, or not feeling committed to queer community, or just needing to exercise and see someone who has a masculine-of-center lesbian presentation—[I get that] at Ballez, and it’s beautiful,” Roberts says.

Artist Kirstin Huber, 29, also found solace in Ballez, which she enrolled in after a double hip surgery in 2016 as part of the process of reclaiming her body and achieving a lifelong dream of dancing. She cites the playlists — a queer-influenced collection of songs by David Bowie, The Indigo Girls, and Brandi Carlile, among others — and the empowering “fuck society, fuck the standards of ballet!” atmosphere as some of the reasons she returns to class each week. Most important, she says, is that no one questions her disability or her skill level.

Pyle still draws from the origins of classical ballet, but Ballez subverts many of its traditions: In addition to ditching the mirrors, for instance, Pyle places students in a circle rather than the typical line at the bar (in many studios, the “best” students get the head of that line). Pyle has reimagined the ballet "court"—based on the Baroque parties in which ballet originated as a form of entertainment—as an inclusive, non-hierarchical grouping of queer peers. And at Ballez, instead of de-gendering the movements, Pyle plays with the spectrum of movements dancers can perform, allowing students to "try on" what we think of as being "femme" or "masc."

Pyle is not the only dance instructor actively working to break down the gender binary. Growing up, instructors would often refer to Rachel Pritzlaff and her fellow students as "ladies," which “always rubbed me the wrong way,” she says. “We were there to perform a dance, not perform our gender.” Now Pritzlaff, founding executive director of Rivertown Dance Academy in Tarrytown, New York, makes sure to call her students “dancers,” as opposed to a gendered label.

Pritzlaff also allows dancers of any gender to train en pointe (performing on tippy toes), and makes advanced dancers learn both sides of classical partnering,arguing that knowing both roles helps dancers understand their partner's challenges in a performance. Technically, it is possible for dancers to gender-swap roles, but rigorous training differentiates and controls dancers’ bodies from a young age: Women are taught to jump quicker and lighter; men typically never focus on pointe work. This means making a gender-role change such as, say, casting a woman as Prince—or Princess!—Siegfried to dance opposite Odile/Odette in Swan Lake extra difficult.

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In recent years, some "gender-bending" has existed on the fringes of the performance circuit. Humorous dance company Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, in which men wear tights and tutus to perform pointe work and traditional feminine ballet, is arguably the world’s most famous all-male ballet group, while the New Chamber Ballet is one of a handful of all-female ballet companies performing original choreography—though the dancers have yet to choreograph any female-female love stories.

BalletNext, a small ballet company based in Manhattan and led by former American Ballet Theater dancer Michele Wiles, meanwhile, is also promoting female-female duets for the upcoming season. Asked if the choreography had a romantic plot, Wiles said she “hadn’t thought about that yet, [but] I wouldn’t say no.” So then, as part of larger cultural sea changes in the understanding, and acceptance of, the gender spectrum, an increasing number of major companies are beginning to make strides toward inclusion and non-binary representation.

"Ballet creates a different world for the performers and audience to enter into—it's up to them to decide what they want to see in it."

In October 2017, New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck debuted a statement-making casting swap the company described as "unprecedented," featuring a man performing the traditional woman’s role in a pas de deux duet as part of his "protest ballet" The Times Are Racing.As The New York Times noted, the performance was met with both acclaim and controversy; "it’s time for there to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love,” Peck told the paper, “and a woman can lead a company of 20 dancers that include both men and women.” (Also for the NYCB, the choreographer Lauren Lovette debuted a male/male pas de deux in her work Not Our Fate.)

Just this month, the English National Ballet's Sleeping Beauty featured, for the very first time, a male-assigned, gender-fluid dancer performing as part of the female ballet corps. (The dancer, Chase Johnsey, had previously performed with Les Ballets Trockadero.) And Girl, a Flemish film which recently debuted at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, is receiving buzz for its nuanced portrayal of Lara, a trans teen training to become a ballerina, with its plot weaving the transition Lara hopes to undergo with the transition the ballet world would have to also undergo to accommodate her gender-affirmation.

“Students now have a larger awareness of the world and want to see that their teachers do too. I have teenage students who will say, 'Ballet is so straight!’” Pritzlaff says. “I’ll explain that ballet creates a different world for the performers and audience to enter into—it's up to them to decide what they want to see in it.”

For Ballez students, the world of inclusive ballet doesn't end outside the studio. As the class concludes with a reverence—a cool-down to calm music in which all dancers perform bows and curtseys, mimicking throwing flowers to the imaginary audience and kneeling heroically, like a prince—some students stay to practice choreography, others make plans to commute home together or meet up during the week. And those who are pumped up by the soundtrack, the exercise endorphins, and the simple pleasure of being surrounded by like-minded, enthusiastic queer people, head down the street to a nearby lesbian bar where a jukebox with Ballez-friendly songs awaits.

Elyssa Goodman

Also, the opportunity for more dancing.

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